NBA Historical Player Rankings

Player Rankings by Career (Regular Season, 1980-2014)

For now (since it’s all I’ve gotten done so far), these rankings are based solely on the NBA regular season from the 1979-80 season through the 2013-14 season. Stat nerds will recognize this as the three point era. No playoff data included yet. Scroll farther down this page to see the player rankings broken down season by season.

There have been 2620 different NBA players that have played at least 1 NBA minute the last 35 years – so there are 2620 players ranked.

As for the PDF – it’s pretty self explanatory. If there isn’t a ranking listed next to a colum, it’s because the player either didn’t have enough career minutes to qualify (3387 career minutes needed, rankings in the purple columns) or didn’t have a “qualified” season (played at least 15% of the available team minutes in any season) when looking at the best season rankings in red on the right. Again, this is only regular season since 1979-80 – so older players (Dr. J, Kareem, etc) only have partial career results – and players who have won a multitude of championships (Jordan, Pippen, Rodman, Shaq, Kobe, etc.) will look better or much better when the playoff ratings (and adjusted playoff WAR) are done & included. Enjoy:

The 22.5/30/150/150 Club (1980-2014)

For now (until I add the older seasons), ALL 72 player regular seasons (a select club of 20 players) since 1980 in which the player had a WAR of >22.5 (the player contributed over 22.5 wins better than a replacement level player for their team), &/or a WAR/48 > 30 (the player would have contributed more than 30 wins better than a replacement level player if they played every minute of the season), &/or a HnR >150 (average NBA player = 100), &/or a HnI >150 (average NBA player = 100). The ranks listed for each metric are the players’ rank out of 17103 player regular seasons since 1980. The number on the far right (4*, 3*, 2*, or 1*) is how many of the 4 metrics for the player that season broke the 22.5/30/150/150 barrier. The list is sorted first by star # on the far right, and then WAR rank: